‘Betsy Prig … Try the Cowcumbers, God Bless You!’: Hierarchy, Transgression and Trouble in Martin Chuzzlewit

Abstract

Pseudo-scientific classification, whether it is the implicit formalism of much twentieth-century literary and cultural analysis or the binarism of Victorian constructions of gender, class, and nationality, produces its own demons, even as it works to quell others. While some comfort and security may be afforded by reflecting on those individuals and cultural products that fit neatly into socially useful, even if tautologically defined, categories and definitions, observers must inevitably respond to the exception, the exceptional, whose very presence can only be said to ‘prove the rule’ by those most invested in rigid rule-making and rule-preserving. Even the glibbest of commentators must experience the unsettling, disorienting effect of the transgressive, even if her or his discourse fluidly accommodates the rare appearance of the anomalous and extraordinary. Rarity, of course, is a key to maintaining the intactness of the original construct, for when the exceptions threaten not only to breach but actually to overwhelm the boundaries of the rule, then feelings of dis-ease often give way to perceptions of disease, which can signal an even more vigilant, more anxious marshalling of defenses in the name of ‘natural’ law and systemic health.